Snow Child, Winter Child
by BiblioMatsuri
Summary: Just a little story about a couple of kids. AU-ish for both, post Kindred Spirits, pre Rise of the Guardians. Rated for dark themes.


Disclaimer: I don't own DP or RoTG.

BGM: "Eva" by Nightwish.

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Snow Child, Winter Child

For as long as he can remember, Jack has seen the lost children. (There was a little girl in fine robes sewn in fantastic patterns climbing a staircase and slipping falling down, again and again. There was a little boy in a button-up shirt and shorts with more patches than cloth, singing to himself as he tries to light a fire. There was a red-headed girl and there was her dark-haired brother, blue eyes staring empty into the distance.) They always give him the creeps. Thankfully, they can't see him any more than the living do, so he can just find somewhere else to play until it's time to move on.

He should have known it wouldn't work forever, because here is a girl with scraggly tar-colored hair and empty eyes and skin so pale he can almost see through it, and she's too cold to be alive, and she's _touching_ him.

She opens cracked bleeding lips and breathes, rasping out a question. "Who are you?"

He cracks a smile, shiny and shallow and sharp and (make-her-go-away) he wanted to be seen, but not like this. "Why, what do you mean?"

Blue eyes sharpen into chips of ice, and he's calmed down before he realizes it. She's not one of the lost (the dead), he can see that now, she's too angry (too alive) to be one of those creepy not-children, the ones too far gone for anyone's help, even if the help is just a boy who makes ice sculptures.

"You're not human," she says sharply, voice clearer than it had been seconds ago. "I mean, your skin is the wrong color – not that there's anything wrong with it! It's just that humans only come in pinkish or yellowish or brown, and you're kind of bluey-gray. And you're really, freezing cold. And you have _white hair_." She laughs at little by the end, a barely-audible current bobbing under the words, and might have been offended if he couldn't hear the tears under the laughter.

She stops for a second, uncurling her (barely warm) fingers from around his wrist, and looks at her hands.

"You're obviously not human." And now her voice is flat, so calm it can't be real, and she's still talking and even though he's been here too long he can't just leave, not when this not-lost girl could see him.

"But you're not a ghost, either, you don't feel right."

"Wait, what?" he blurts out, but she keeps talking like a pipe that's sprung a leak.

"You feel like – like the little ones under the leaves, or the kinda-women in the river, or the nice little golden man. Only you're cold, and you're really bright, like ice, and you feel almost _human_, but you're not, and – and you're still here. I'm really weak now, you could have just shaken me off and left as soon as I saw you but you didn't, and I don't know why…"

Yeah, well, he didn't know either.

"So…" And now she's sharp again. "Who are you?"

He is silent for half a moment, the space between beats of her heart, and then-

He grins, broad and brilliant and lighting up the forgotten corner these two lonely children have found themselves in. "I'm Jack Frost, of course! And what's your name?"

She pales even further, and he backtracks. "Aw, never mind, it's probably boring and ordinary anyway."

"Hey!" she yelps in protest, cheeks flaring red.

Not missing a beat, Jack continues, "So, what's a cute kid like you doing all the way out here on a cold night?"

She looks away, and Jack mentally hits himself really quickly, because of course if she had anyplace better to be in the middle of a snowstorm, she'd be there.

"…It doesn't matter," she mutters, and glares up at him again. "So, what are you doing here?"

He gives her a mock-pained look. "I'm making it snow."

Her eyes widen, and for a second she just looks so young he freezes in place. "So, you really do that?"

And now he knows something is wrong, because she looks like she should be too old to just believe something like that. And now he has to answer her, only his mouth goes faster than his brain like it usually does (because it never mattered what he said because there was no one to hear him), and he asks her a question instead. "Do you want to be here?"

At that, she looks at him very hard, eyebrows crinkling together. "No."

"Do you have anywhere better to go?"

"I don't have anywhere to stay."

"Those aren't the same question, tiny," he says in all seriousness, smiling.

"Well, it's still no to both, then," she says. Then she starts, and shouts, "Hey! Don't call me tiny!"

He grins. "Well, you are pretty titchy."

"Am not!" she retorts.

"Are too!" he sings.

"Am not!" she repeats.

"Are too," he says smugly.

"Am not!" she insists.

"Are not," he agrees.

"Yeah, I am too, and so there!"

Silence hits like a feather pillow, the small clearing between scraggly bushes and piles of rusty junk filling with snow as she stands there open-mouthed.

"You cheated," she says finally.

"Wait, there were rules?" he asks, genuinely confused. Not that he wasn't laughing at her for falling for it, but it feels like it would be really mean to laugh at her out loud right now. Like kicking a puppy. A really sad, really tiny puppy that was lost in a snowstorm.

She opens her mouth to retort, but her jaw clacks shut as she starts shivering, hard. "Ow, stop it," she mutters.

Panicking, Jack quiets the snow and the wind, and the storm moves away, just a bit, leaving a bubble of calm and relative warmth around them.

She looks up through the shivers, again wide-eyed. "Wow."

"Yeah, wow," he agrees.

They stand there in the snow for a few long moments, the space left by a stilled heart.

Scuffing his feet restlessly, he looks around at everything except for the tiny mystery girl, and gives in. "Hey."

"Yeah?"

"You wanna come with me?"

If anyone had been mad enough to brave the storm that night, they would have seen a very strange sight: A little girl in shorts and a tattered jacket making snow angels and throwing snowballs at thin air.

The next morning, they were gone. Perhaps if one had looked, a kinder eye might have revealed something very different indeed.

After all, there are few things truer than children playing in the snow.

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A/N: Further disclaimer: I'm not familiar with Rise of the Guardians, by which I mean I haven't actually seen the movie, let alone read the books it was based off of. With that said, I'm not sure where this came from. I just really wanted those conversations to happen.

Please read and review.


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